I think recently here I mentioned my old RQ character Scotty McQuack from around 1980. He was a bagpiper, and one character kept slicing the bag. That was Gary, owner of Aero in Santa Monica, so I just had to accept the vandalization of my ducks pipes.

JRT: I don't know the bottom line answer, but a few intelligent animal races were included in RQ. I suspect in the duck's case, it stems from how much silly humor was rampant in gaming. From endless Monty Python quotes spewed by the little weird guy who smells like cat-piss, to the wise-guy who wants to run Curly from the Three Stooges as a character, games were often jokey and filled with lame ideas in the late 70's/early 80's. The duck was probably at least half a joke, but for some reason it just worked in RQ.

Maybe in some way ducks were also meant to be the RQ version of hobbits?

As a person not very familiar with RuneQuest or it's history, why Ducks?

I've never read a definitive explanation, but I think Brunomac offers some good theorizing on the subject. I used to hate the very idea of Ducks and used them as an excuse to dislike Glornatha for a long time, but I've long since made my peace with them and indeed have come to realize that more fantasy settings could do with their own "ducks," if you know what I mean -- whimsical, even silly, oddities that simultaneously prevent us from taking ourselves too seriously while gaming and, paradoxically, make our fantasy worlds seem more real through their unwillingness to conform to what we think should be the case.

I figured I'd ask because the two sources I mentioned might have been inspirational. I think a lot of people growing up in the creator's time read the Disney comics by Carl Barks and those things are actually a lot more enjoyable than some modern comics. I also thought of Howard because, while that character became a punchline because of an ill-conceived movie, the comic itself was very witty and filled with satire that applies even today.

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